Such incidents include exposure of sensitive or embarrassing information, improper exposure or theft of customer information and improper exposure or theft of intellectual property.

Eight Ways to Prevent Data Breaches

Perimeter CTO Kevin Prince has kindly offered up several tips for preventing a data breach.

But the situation may be far worse. Michael Osterman, analyst and principal for Osterman Research, which fielded the survey on Proofpoint's behalf, explains:

Data loss is, at a minimum, an embarrassing thing for a company. At a maximum, it's actually actionable. A lot of organizations, a lot of decision-makers are fairly reluctant to really advertise this. One of the advantages of doing a survey like this is that the information is anonymized. Nobody can actually go back on somebody and say 'Hey, you lost data,' but it's still not something you want to advertise heavily.

The survey notes that 64 percent of IT professionals are highly concerned about data loss resulting from the physical loss of laptops, smartphones and other mobile devices. Another top concern is social media, with 53 percent of respondents saying they were highly concerned about the risk of data leaks through a social networking site.